Slow-Motion Invasion Update: U.S. Base Espionage
Air Force Secretary warns of potential war with China, also - Spy Balloon didn't spy?
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, there have been around 100 incidents involving Chinese nationals trying to access U.S. military bases and other installations - with these individuals sometimes posing as tourists.
The Defense Department, FBI and other agencies held a review last year to try to limit these incidents, which involve people whom officials have dubbed gate-crashers because of their attempts—either by accident or intentionally—to get onto U.S. military bases and other installations without proper authorization. They range from Chinese nationals found crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico to what appeared to be scuba divers swimming in murky waters near a U.S. government rocket-launch site in Florida.
The incidents, which U.S. officials describe as a form of espionage, appear designed to test security practices at U.S. military installations and other federal sites. Officials familiar with the practice say the individuals are typically Chinese nationals pressed into service and required to report back to the Chinese government.
No espionage charges have yet been filed related to these incidents. The Wall Street Journal did note that in 2019 two Chinese diplomats were expelled from the U.S. under suspicion of espionage following an incident at a sensitive military based in Virginia. The facility the diplomats breached is a location where Navy SEALs train.
According to the article, U.S. officials think the breaches represent dry-run tests of the security procedures on our nation’s military bases and other facilities and that the information gleaned by these individuals is being sent back to the Communist Chinese government.
The attempts by Chinese actors to spy while physically on a military base are in addition to the spy balloons that caused a stir earlier this year by floating unfeterred over sensitive locations in the interior of the U.S.
The NY Post mapped the flight of the balloon, which the Biden administration refused to shoot down until it was off the coast of South Carolina.
Now officials are claiming the spy balloon wasn’t spying.
On the Sept. 17 edition of CBS Sunday Morning, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley says the spy equipment on the balloon wasn’t activated and captured no intelligence as it drifted across the country - again, unfettered - before finally being shot down over the Atlantic ocean.
Milley said, there was a “high confidence assessment that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon.” He then said there were “theories” the balloon was headed to Hawaii but was blown off course.
Is anyone buying that?
More To The Story
Chinese individuals infiltrating and spying on military bases in the U.S. is the latest cherry on top of China’s slow-motion invasion. War is on the minds of some of our nation’s top military leaders.
Deteriorating communications with China along with concerns the country may invade Taiwan have fueled the issue of a potential U.S. war with China. Statements by President Biden have bolstered that concern, saying he would send troops to defend the island nation.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown said in a Sept. 8 memo that foreign entities are “targeting and recruiting U.S. and NATO-trained military talent across specialties and career fields” in order to train China’s army.
Brown’s memo carries some weight, as he has been nominated to replace Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As reported by The Hill, on Sept. 11 Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned that “China was building up its military to prepare for a potential war with the U.S., and he said America must optimize its forces to counter the rising threat.”
In remarks given at the Air and Space Forces Association Warfighter Symposium in National Harbor, Maryland, The Hill reported Kendall as saying it was “vital to prepare for war because China is developing its forces at a rapid pace and has created two new military branches: a force designed to counter aircraft carriers, airfields and other critical assets, and a strategic support service that works to achieve information dominance in the space and cyber domains.”
On Sept. 12, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a strategy document outlining China was ramping up its cyberattack capability as a “critical element” in waging war against the U.S., per a report by the Daily Caller.
Excerpt from the DoD report:
Earlier this year, four-star U.S. Air Force General Mike Minihan, leader of the Air Mobility Command, sent a memo to his command’s 110,000 members about potential conflict with China “in the next two years.”
"I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me will fight in 2025,” Minihan wrote in the memo, which Pentagon officials characterized as “not representative of the department's view on China.”
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